The Pocket Handkerchief

[thescot]

Its funny the lessons we learn. My mother and father also grew up dirt poor but always stressed to us kids that "Good manners cost nothing." A lesson I passed on to our children.

Anyone my age probably has parents who grew up poor; it was the Great Depression after all.

But, my grandfather, a railroad engineer, and my other grandfather, a railroad engineer, and my father, a railroad engineer, always dressed appropriately and insisted on good manners as well. Being "tacky" was a great crime according to one grandmother.

When I was a small boy, my living grandfather would come to collect me, and we would "go downtown" wearing our best coats and ties if not suits, have our shoes shined at the barber shop, and attend to our affairs while wearing very smart snap brim hats. (I was about 5 or 6 when this started.)

And I think we always had pocket handkerchiefs.